Sunday, February 26, 2012

It's raining Katz, Hallelujah!

I'm a host on shabbat.com with my status set to always available. This shabbat, I had the chance to participate in a comedy of errors you usually only see in a movie.

Thursday evening, I received a message from shabbat.com that a Joe Katz was requesting to come for Friday or Saturday meal, with his kallah. Now maybe I had a brain fart, but I decided that kallah could also mean that they've been married for a few months, not just engaged. I replied that I have room for the Friday meal.

Several hours later, I received a message that a Rivkah Katz was requesting to come for the Friday night meal. Now I just accepted Joe for Friday and here's a girl, with the same last name, sending request for the same meal. I've had people who were coming together, send separate requests so I just assumed that this is Joe's kallah and she's sending a separate request because they have separate accounts and is doing it so that shabbat.com shows the correct total guests. I clicked accept and put the matter out of my mind.

Fast forward to Friday night, all the guests are here and Joe introduces his fiancée as Hanna. So they're not yet married but girls do like to be cute and change their names on social websites before the marriage. Wasn't her name something else? Though I did have people come over who use a different name on shabbat.com so this didn't raise much of a flag either.

It's now the middle of the fish course and there's a knock on the door. Both grandmas are here, all 3 sets of guests are here, who can this be? I open the door and there's a girl there who starts apologizing for being late and that the door downstairs was closed and the only thing that's going through my mind at this moment is "Who are you?". I wonder if I had that deer in the headlights look when I opened the door. Well, you don't look like a serial killer so do come in.

Turns out these were completely different people, not related to each, not even from the same country, who had the same last name and decided to send a request for the same meal, one after the other. Food and space were definitely not a problem as I'm not one of those people who cooks for the exact number of guests. In fact, I tend to expect friends to suddenly call me at any time on Friday and ask if they could come over or even pick up extra guests in shul.

This is definitely the most entertaining set of coincidences that I've had the pleasure to experience. And as long as I'm the only one who got freaked out, no harm, no foul. And thank you to all the Katzs and not yet Katzs for coming over and making it a fun meal.